Storyteller, Part 2
A Liar By Any Other Name
The Storyteller series is an ongoing recollection of my love of tall tales and the many ways I have been blessed (and sometimes cursed) to tell them.
Previously: Storyteller, Part 1 - Tools of the Trade
I was terribly bullied by my schoolmates for my entire childhood, up until I reached 8th grade. I don’t know if it was because I was poor, chubby, weird, or the perennial new kid in school.
Whatever the case, I rarely had anything that could be called a true friendship amongst my classmates.
I can’t be sure, but I think this searing unpopularity, combined with my highly active imagination, may have been the catalyst for turning me into a prolific liar. I lied till I was blue in the face (to steal a hillbilly-ism).
I was that kid they make cautionary tales about. You know, the one who lied so much that his lies consumed him? The kid who told so many false stories that he could no longer tell what was a lie and what was the truth?
If only it had stopped when I was a kid.
I actively struggled with lying well into my 20s. I can confidently say that I was finally past it (more like rescued from it) by the time I was 25. But to this day, the impulse to tell a completely fabricated story or to embellish totally unnecessarily still comes upon me.
So what did I lie about? Everything.
It started with fabricating stories to make myself more interesting or to ingratiate myself to my classmates. I recall making up stories about obscure, vulgar videogames I had played to impress a classmate named Frank, who I suspect also lied to me about his escapades.
It evolved into lying to my parents and teachers about school assignments and bad behaviors. I excelled in my classes until it came to homework, and then the web of lies cast itself over myself and my grades as I sought temporary reprieves from consequences that inevitably caught up with me when report card season came to bear.
It then crumbled into unintelligible lies that were completely unmotivated beyond just the habit of it. I still cringe at the awful lies I told as recently as college. I am still tempted to make up a convincing lie instead of telling the simple truth in social circumstances (usually when I want to flake out of doing something).
I’d love to give you specific, anecdotal tales of lies I told and how they blew up in my face, or even the juicy lies I got away with, but that’s not going to happen. The innocuous ones have faded from memory, and the heinous ones are reserved for the day I finally see a shrink.
I tell you this fact about myself because I want to highlight honesty. But first, let’s talk about what a lies are.
Lies are a coward’s shield.
In my experience, lies can be used as a defensive tool to protect oneself from a perceived threat. Threats I lied to evade include rejection, condemnation, and punishment.
Lies are a means of control.
I tried (and still feel the impulse to try) to control how others perceive me, and the easiest way to do that is to fabricate a story that paints a very specific picture of me.
Lies are also a shackle.
A good lie might protect you or control your image, but a lie is a chain that wraps around you tighter and tighter and tighter until you can’t breathe. Tell enough lies, and then every moment is steeped in panic that someone has figured you out.
But Honesty is freedom.
The day I realized I no longer had to lie, no longer had to work so hard to remember what was real and what was made up, no longer had to worry that someone was going to see through me or trip me up, was the day I felt the chains start to loosen.
I’d love to say that it all fell away and I skipped off into the sunset, but that’s not how life works. Just because we are past a certain behavior doesn’t necessarily mean we’re past the consequences of a lifetime of that behavior.
There are still the occasional old lies that catch up to me, and I have to struggle all over again with whether or not I’ll take up that old chain or if I’ll humble myself, be honest, and continue on in freedom.
So what does this all have to do with storytelling?
Glad you asked, because I was just coming to that.
There are those who refer to performers and writers pejoratively as “professional liars.” The perceived synonysm between lying and storytelling was always something about the movie Galaxy Quest that bothered me (even though I adore that movie; “by Grabthar’s hammer” indeed).
Stories and lies aren’t the same. A liar can use stories as part of his repertoire, certainly, but what about true stories? What about stories that reveal a wonderful, good lesson about people? What about the stories called parables spoken by Jesus himself?
The point that I’m trying to come around to is this:
The best stories are honest.
“Honest” isn’t necessarily the same thing as “true.” There’s certainly overlap, but one can tell a made-up story honestly and with an absolutely honest meaning.
I never thought that the Little Boy who cried, “Wolf!” was a real Little Boy. I knew he was a fictional Little Boy. But I also understood the honesty of that story: we are all tempted to lie, but lies are dangerous, and I could easily wind up being that Little Boy (and unfortunately I did despite the warning).
I spent so many years and so much of my focus on telling false stories for purely selfish reasons, and thus I missed out on so many opportunities to tell honest stories full of life and wonder.
That’s why I’m here now.
Making up for lost time.
One honest story after another.
